The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
